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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:40 pm
* “Speaking of Kerry’s speech, it wasn’t so hot. Applause lines fell flat, and his voice trailed off randomly at times.”—Daily Kos begins to realise that John Kerry might not be the perfect candidate
* “It’s certainly a misconception that Democrats are eloquent, sophisticated, sensitive, and therefore beyond the knavish dirt commonly attributed to the ‘right-wing attack dog.’ Last week, I found no difference between the two.”—the Village Voice’s George Smith, subject to abuse from Right and Left following renewed attention to a year-old piece on temporary peacenik hero Richard Clarke
* “Pilger has evidence that the Bush Administration was MOVING BEFORE 9/11/01 TO ACT AGAINST THE TALIBAN. Pilger, without knowing it, counters Clarke’s charges that the Bush Administration didn’t take Al Qaeda seriously enough!”—blogger For Now notes this December 2001 item from John Pilger: “Pakistan’s former foreign minister Niaz Naik has revealed that he was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was then travelling in central Asia, already gathering support for an anti-Afghanistan war ‘coalition’”.
* “I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.”—Daily Kos contemplates the murder of contractors rebuilding Iraq
* “Something has gone terribly wrong.”—the Globe and Mail’s Simon Houpt covers black resentment of Air America, which took over many minority-run radio stations
* “There is only one reason Prime Minister Blair/the UK is so high on the hit list, and that is their support for the US.”—the Sydney Morning Herald’s ReaderLink staff (“Nerida, Penny, Josh & Miranda”) explain a Peter Fray piece that claimed an al-Qaeda assault on Heathrow Airport scheduled mere days after September 11 was “to punish Tony Blair for his support of the US”
* “The man is highly creative. He is, beyond his full ability yet to control it, a man given to the creative spirit. That he cannot fully control it is not to be critical of him because the control of the creative act requires ultimately mastery, and the journey of total mastery, if anyone’s finally to obtain it, is one demanding decades … The creative spirit drives him. Because the creative spirit is driving him, empowers him, guides him, loves him – yes – for his commitment to it, this creative spirit holds him. He is so given to it he appears born unto it, and once on the journey he cannot step away … We have here a man who feels things first, as an intuitive knowingness. This is the same intuitive knowingness once spoken of as being a woman’s knowingness or intuition, before we better understood the forces at play in each of us. It is a sensing; a sense. To the woman reading this, may this be at least another small step in our shared understanding. For the man reading this, just to be sure, know that when the footballer is about to cut through and score it is this sense he first feels …That sense is an energy. It brings written into it the nuts and bolts of what is required to make it happen, but the nuts and bolts flow much later. First, comes the sense. Being highly creative, Latham knows only the sense, the feeling, the energy, the absolute empowerment of it, before anything else.”—artist Robert Bosler on Mark Latham, whom he’s probably never met; in the Sydney Morning Herald
* “While supposedly supporting Democratic Party ideals, many treat underlings no better than serfs, they wangle obscenely huge payments for their work that so deplete budgets that supporting actors find their rates cut, and they have an unofficial ‘black list’ that works against anyone in the industry who dares voice an alternative opinion. So much for them writing and complaining about ‘attacks on freedom of expression’.—veteran Australian showbiz correspondent John-Michael Howson on Hollywood leftoids
* “In August 2001, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, determined to halt what had become a flood of boat people trying to reach his country’s shores, turned away a leaking refugee boat called the Tampa.”—the New York Times has remedial fact-checking issues when it comes to Australia
* “Every time we discover a cell, we eliminate it as a pre-emptive measure.”—a senior French official on his nation’s admirable anti-terrorism measures
* “The difference is joy.”—Baghdad resident Najid Hamid tells Le Monde of the difference between pre- and post-liberation Iraq
* “My immediate reaction was to charge at these bastards and try to smash thier placards and hurt them as much as possible.”—a peace activist’s reaction to pro-liberation groups joining their demonstration. He continued: “In the ideal situation Young Liberals should be left bruised, bashed and bleeding if they dare show thier face at a rally like that. That way they will be more hesitant about coming next time, and if they do the police will be more likely to quickly move them on.” Peace. Out
* “I really don’t care; they’re all gonna die.”—US Lance Cpl. Ryan Christiansen, asked if he was concerned that a ceasefire would allow Saddamite forces to regroup
* “I have just watched President Bush at his press conference, live on TV. He places long pauses throughout and before his replies to questions. I have a theory that he may be wearing a radio ear-phone and someone outside the room is dictating his answers to him. If you watch carefully these pauses almost match the length of his reply and his eyes often glance down as though he is listening to something during these pauses. Who is actually answering the questions? I have no proof of this.—SMH Webdiary reader Phil Smith is an early adopter of the Bush-electronic-device theory
* “Now I’ll show you how an Italian dies.”—hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi refuses to yield to his Saddamite captors. Al-Jazeera declines to run footage of his murder, declaring it “too gruesome”
* “The interrogation turned out to be a moving, profound experience.”—former human shield and claimed Fallujah kidnap victim Donna Mulhearn: “I told them I was a member of the Labor Party and that we were working to get John Howard out of office at the coming election”
* “If bin Laden is proved to be alive at this point, I’ll take out a year-long subscription to the SMH.”—me, wrong again
* “I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the ‘news conference’ given by George W. Bush. He’s still talking about finding ‘weapons of mass destruction’—this time on Saddam’s ‘turkey farm.’”—Michael Moore. The farm to which Bush referred was in Libya
* “They were so angry I thought they were going to turn the tables over.”—anti-Democrat reaction of a focus group to a Democrat campaign ad accusing George W. Bush of negligence for failing to stop the 9/11 attacks
* “An Islamic rite of revenge.”—Spanish interior ministry description of the incineration and desecration of a Spanish policeman’s corpse. Francisco Javier Torronteras died when Islamic terrorists blew themselves up during the hunt for perpetrators of the Madrid bombing; his body was subsequently exhumed, set alight, and speared with a shovel and pick
* “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy.’ They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow—and they will win.”—Michael Moore, who said the same thing about Wesley Clark and John Kerry
* “As far as I’m concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better. I know it’s going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid – I pray for it, I look forward to the day.”—Luton social worker Abdul Haq
* “Our stagnant continent has been a virtual museum for decades. Many could argue that we already were nothing more than an amusement park. The decision to legally become a large theme park is really only a formality.”—an ‘unnamed EU representative’ in the Weekly World News
* “Struggling to maintain support.”—the ABC’s North American correspondent Lisa Millar rates Bush’s chances in a week that saw his polling improve
* “Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St Matthew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad, and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country.”—John Pilger, who might not have felt as safe if he was Kurdish, or an attractive woman who’d caught Uday’s raping eye, or supportive of Iraqi democracy
* “The family has it. I don’t have it.”—John Kerry’s nuanced explanation of his SUV ownership
* “F—in’ dickhead.”—a spectator in court during the sentencing of gang rapists, one of whom claimed: “We did not commit this crime, the crime was committed against us. The police set us up because we are Muslims, your honour”
* “The uniform material that’s being used could in fact trigger trauma symptoms in a child.”—Annie Wimbush, member of Suffolk 4 Peace, opposing a plan to supply Iraqi children with teddy bears made from military uniforms.
* “The publication of the cadaver montage – in which Bush’s face is made up of squares containing smiles and stares of military men and women who are now all dust – threatens to become one of the most powerful propaganda images in history.”—The Guardian’s Mark Lawson, unaware that a “cadaver montage” would feature actual cadavers
* “The feeling is entirely mutual.”—Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer’s response to an al Qaeda representative’s description of John Howard as “wicked”
* “Since September 11, whenever Islam is highlighted in Western media, it is somehow inextricably linked with acts of terror.”—Greg Barns and Jane Rankin-Reid are wide-eyed with astonishment
* “In my neighborhood in Puerto Rico, Tillman would have been called a ‘pendejo,’ an idiot. Tillman, in the absurd belief that he was defending or serving his all-powerful country from a seventh-rate, Third World nation devastated by the previous conflicts it had endured, decided to give up a comfortable life to place himself in a combat situation that cost him his life … this was a ‘G.I. Joe’ guy who got what was coming to him.”—University of Massachusetts undergraduate Rene Gonzalez
* “I’m still trying to breathe after seeing on Lateline the photos of American soldiers smiling as they pose with tortured Iraqi prisoners, if torture is the word for the horror. The images are out of a Caligula movie. The world has gone to hell. George Bush’s war on Iraq will haunt all our lives.”—Margo Kingston, who presumably didn’t inhale a single atom of oxygen during Saddam’s reign
- The Robert Bosler “Mark Latham is Jesus” quote is by far the best!
Gotta feel sorry for Latham now, though. Most of the media seemed to “hype” him up to be BIGGER THAN JESUS. But since Howard’s great win on October 9 despite all the scorn and contempt that the elites could muster against him, the media doesn’t seem to want a thing to do with Latham.
Posted by Richard_of_Oz on 2004 12 23 at 01:37 PM • permalink
- I still remember October 9th. Here in Woodside Queens it was October 8th & a beautiful evening. I’ve back & found a sequence of comments which I remembered
=====================SO much for the election day impressions – just more ideological outbursts .pity…
Posted by: Will S at October 9, 2004 at 10:23 AM
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My Australian election day impression…it�s a beautiful evening, the temperature is just right, here in Woodside, Queens, NY, USA. Ideological outburst: Vote Howard! Hard would be the day that Skippy picks Le Pew over Lassie. Archetypes don�t fail us now.Posted by: ForNow at October 9, 2004 at 10:34 AM
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The sun was warm on my bra straps as I jumped the gate into Bellyrigg Public School to cast my vote for truth and hope. The party faithful rallied to my cause and gave me a bandaid wgen I landed badly and scraped my elbow. But blood and democracy are twin sisters of a greater future, so I didn’t mind. Old women were there, gracefully smoking Vicounts and handing out Housie forms, so I pinched one and said that sisterhoos embraced the bi-cause more than in the white picket 50s. A small dog yapped.Posted by: Lee rhiannon’s polyp at October 9, 2004 at 10:36 AM
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I went down to City Hall to vote for John Howard, but they just looked at me funny. Could it be because I live in Massachusetts?Posted by: George L at October 9, 2004 at 10:37 AM
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Perfectly serene blue sky over Sydney on election morning – cloudless, warm, with a faint fingernail-clipping of a waned moon in the north.Except for a skywriter excreting the vapid slogans “would I lie?” and “no more lies”.
On election morning.
Who could possibly have put him up to it I wonder? Maybe it’s time to suggest a little legislated restrictions on skywriting to our local members next week.
Posted by: Romeo at October 9, 2004 at 10:44 AM
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(Comment formatting prettied up by The Management.)
Upon reading so many idiotic leftist remarks all gathered together, one can’t help thinking either that the left has become a weird cult which literally disbelieves in the solidity of facts, or that most of its leading voices are conscious propagandists. Either way, they seem ripe for an investigative reporter to infiltrate their circles & find out what they say in private among trusted fellow leftists. It just can’t be what they say in public. Can it?